this is the law that governs the rates of reimbursement to providers under the medicare program. unless we repeal that law, we will have to once again patch the law as we have done for many years now with a so-called medicare doc fix, and i think the time has come to go ahead and repeal the law. the fifth item i wanted to just mention is that congress needs to give the president the power to raise the debt ceiling. at the same time, congress should retain congress' right to disapprove of that increase, but secretary geithner has made a proposal to the congress which i believe makes good sense. it is based upon the arrangement that was agreed to that senator mcconnell had put forward in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that we all lived through. obviously, this is a significant to-do list, and i don't intend to speak about all these items. i would like to focus my remarks on the need for congress to pass the extenders package of tax provisions. i feel this has gotten too little attention. it deserves to be dealt with as a major component of the reaction or the response to the so-calle